Nikolai Vatutin

Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin (16 December 1901-15 April 1944) was an Army General of the Soviet Union who led the 1st Ukrainian Front during World War II.

Biography
Nikolai Fyodorovich Vatutin was born on 16 December 1901 in Chepuhino, Voronezh Governorate, in the Russian Empire (present-day Vatutino, Belgorod Oblast, Russia) to a Russian peasant family. Vatutin was commissioned to the Red Army in 1920 and fought Nestor Makhno's anarchist peasant partisans in the Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. In 1938, the Great Purge let him rapidly advance in rank, which he did through both military and intensive party service. He assisted in the Soviet Union's 1939 invasion of Poland and the 1940 annexation of Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania, both in non-military roles. He was promoted to Lieutenant-General as a reward for his services to Josef Stalin.

He fought in the Baltics during the early stages of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 against Finland and Nazi Germany, and he thrived on attack. Although in one battle he lost 60% casualties, he continued his fighting against the Axis near Leningrad and in 1942 he fought the Germans to a draw at Demyansk. In 1942 he took over the Voronezh Front against the Germans in Operation Blue in southern Russia, and aided in the destruction of 130,000 troops of the Italian 8th Army during Operation Little Saturn and the defeat of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad. He also led the Voronezh Front in the battles for Kharkov and Kursk in 1943, and Vatutin helped to encircle Germans in the Cherkassy Pocket in early 1944. In April 1944 he was killed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in Rivne Oblast, Ukraine, dying of sepsis due to his wounds.